“We never use that word on Wall,” he said. “Let’s just say they’re paying themselves a commission. Don’t worry, darling, let’s mingle.”
Dewey introduced her to the Sharkeys and the Walkers and the Rochfords and the Whitneys and the Weirs. As they circled the room and she listened to the gossip, she started to realize how far out of her depth she was; Dewey’s guests talked about the currents in Shinnecock Bay, “that damned Kennedy fellow,” how dull it was in Kennebunkport in the winter, the best place to ski in California, the scoop on RCA’s new prospectus. Had she heard that Gretel was enrolled at Radcliffe next year?
Gretel who? she thought. And what was Radcliffe?
How could she ever host parties for these people? How could she even find things to talk about? What did she know from mergers and share prices and summer in Maine and winter in Palm Beach?
She started at a terrific bang from outside. The crowd exploded into laughter, no one seemed concerned by it. They poured out the French doors onto the lawn. There was a whistle as another rocket arced up in the sky and then exploded into an orange shower of sparks.
She tugged on her new husband’s arm. “I’m going to find the powder room,” she said.
Such a bathroom it was; and her new husband had four of them just in this one house. All glazed white tiles, floor to ceiling, and a mirror almost the length of one wall with a shelf underneath filled with soaps in fancy packets and little bottles of sweet-smelling stuff for the hands and hair and face.
In Cannon Street, they had two wooden outhouses downstairs for every schmuck and his wife. They stank like nobody’s business in summer and froze over in winter.
She didn’t really need to pee, she just needed to be alone. She went into the cubicle, locked the door, and sat down. She put her head in her hands. What have I done?
Everything had happened so fast. Every few years there is a new me: first, Sura Muscowitz, then the widow Sarah Levine, now Mrs. Sarah Dewey?
She heard the door open and close and heard voices. Someone tried the cubicle door. Sarah thought they would go out again, but no, they decided to fix their faces in the mirror and wait.
“Isn’t this place the bee’s knees,” a woman’s voice said.
“Dewey must be rich as Croesus,” her friend said. “Excuse me, but what is he doing marrying that little trollop? Did you see her? She hasn’t a clue. I heard this time last year she was digging up potatoes in Poland.”
“Guess she gave up potato digging for gold digging.”
“You know the flower girl is her daughter?”
“You are joshing me! I thought she was a showgirl?”
“The girl must have been showing it before Ziegfeld found her, I guess.”
Sarah felt the acid of her own bile in the back of her throat. Too much champagne, too much humiliation. What if Libby heard these people talking about her like this? Libby—where was Libby? She hadn’t seen her since going upstairs to change out of her wedding dress.
“She’s a Jew, you know.”
“They can smell money, those people.”
“She sure sniffed out a bargain this time.”
Sarah opened the door. One of the women was bent over the washbasin, repairing her mascara in the mirror, her well-rounded bottom papered in taffeta; the other, with bobbed hair and a knee-length fringed dress, was fidgeting with an earring.
They stared aghast at her in the mirror.
“It wasn’t Poland, it was Russia,” Sarah said. “And us Jews, not true what they say. We can’t smell money, only trash.” She stepped up to them and sniffed, took one of the perfume sprays off the shelf and squirted it at them. “There. That’s better.”
I won’t let them see me cry, she thought as she walked out. I won’t.
Now I must find my Libby.
She clenched her fists at her sides and made her way back down the hall toward the garden.
“The new Mrs. Dewey.”
A man in a beautifully tailored topcoat and striped trousers stepped in front of her as she made her way down the hall from the bathroom. It was George, Dewey’s best man. Her cheeks still felt like they were on fire. What did he want? She didn’t need anyone else telling her she was trash.
“A word?” he said. He put two fingers on her upper arm and gently guided her through a door into the kitchen and kicked the door shut behind him. She saw the cooks look up for a moment, but when they saw who it was, they quickly put their heads down again, went on with their clattering of saucepans and skillets, throwing purple lobsters into pots, arranging desserts on silver trays. And shouting, everyone shouting at each other. Like being back in Hester Street, it was so much din.
“I promised him I wouldn’t say anything,” George said.
Sarah waited. The look on his face—she had seen bailiffs looking more friendly.
“Billy said I shouldn’t. But I find I can’t help myself.”
“What is wrong?”
“Sarah. You don’t mind if I call you Sarah? Sarah, you are what is wrong.”
“You too, huh? Everyone is entitled to their opinion. I got to find my daughter.” She tried to push past him, but he stood his ground.
“The thing is, you don’t know him, do you? Not like the rest of us. How long ago did you meet him? A month, was it? Two?”
“Three months.”
“Three months.” A chill smile. “He probably told you about inheriting a bank and going to an Ivy League college and having a shack on Long Island. Must have been irresistible.”
“What is it you want?”
“Did he tell you—I mean, knowing Billy, he wouldn’t have—his firm was almost bankrupt when he took over from dear old Dad? I know he makes it sound like he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but it wasn’t like that. He spent the last twenty years making good on his father’s mistakes. Did he tell you he had a brother who was born”—he tapped his forehead—“let’s say he wasn’t quite right. He spent his whole life in a nursing home. Billy took care of him. I don’t mean just paid the bills; he went to visit him every day for fifteen years.”
“No, he never told me.”
“No, of course he didn’t. He wouldn’t. Something else he didn’t tell you: when I lost my first wife, it was Billy who stopped me throwing my life away. I mean literally. I was going to throw myself off a bridge. Billy talked sense into me, got me back to work, stopped me drinking, made me see a purpose in things again.”
“Why are you telling me all this?”
He stepped closer. “Just reminding you that for all his eccentricities, Billy has a lot of friends, powerful friends. You’ve done well for yourself. Well, good for you. But don’t you ever hurt him. Do you understand?”
The door to the kitchen burst open. One of the waiters stood there, wide eyed, and said, “Is Mrs. Dewey here?”
Sarah looked around. George shook his head and smiled. “He means you.”
Of course, of course. “What is it?” Sarah said.
“You should come, Mrs. Dewey. There’s trouble. Your daughter.”
Sarah pushed George aside and followed the man out the door.
30
Libby sat in the dark on the lawn, beyond the line of shadow, listening to all the people talking and laughing, watching the millionaire types with their pretty wives and girlfriends, all fancy-schmancy, and wished she was back on the roof with Frankie, listening to the Kohns fighting and the mice scuttling in the air shaft.
She saw a boy walk onto the lawn past the white marquee tent, coming right toward her. She kept very still. He fidgeted with the fly on his pants, then she heard him start to pee. She couldn’t help it: she started to giggle.
“Holy crap!” When he saw her, he did himself up again and took a step back, into the light. “What are you doing there?”
“I’m just sitting here,” Libby said. “What are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?”
“You’re not allowed.”
; “Hell, Uncle Billy won’t mind. A few brown patches on his lawn; he’s got acres of the stuff.” He stepped closer, peered at her face. “You’re a girl.”
“Top of the class, boy genius.”
“Are you Mrs. Dewey’s flower girl?”
“I’m her daughter.”
“Her daughter,” he said, and something about the way he said it, she didn’t like.
“What of it?”
“What are you doing creeping around here?”
“I don’t know anyone.”
“Big surprise.”
Libby stood up. She thought she could take him on her own, but she wasn’t sure, not without Frankie there to help her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.”
“Sounds like it sure means something to me.”
He squinted at her. “You don’t look much like your mom, do you? I mean, she’s a real good-looking dame.”
“Are you saying I’m not?”
“Well, you’re not going to be in the Follies when you grow up, not with a monkey face like that.” It wasn’t just what he said; it was the little laugh he finished off with. She guessed he wasn’t expecting to get hit, not by a girl. But that was one advantage of growing up on the Lower East Side. She didn’t know much about where the silver went on the table, but she sure knew how to take a bigger kid by surprise and make it count.
When Sarah reached the lawn, she heard her daughter yelling. There was a little crowd gathered around, and when she pushed her way through, she found Libby wrestling with a bigger boy. She had him in a headlock, and his nose was bleeding. Sarah grabbed her daughter and pulled her away, still wriggling and yelling. Sarah had never seen her so mad.
She guessed the boy was two or three years older than Libby. He wanted to carry on with it as well; but then that George, Dewey’s best man, suddenly he was there, and he took the boy by the arm and spun him around.
“What the hell’s going on? Are you fighting? Explain yourself, young man.”
“She started it!”
“You’re fighting with a girl?”
“I didn’t hit her, she hit me!”
“Well, if she hit you, you must have deserved it.” He looked directly at Libby. “Please accept my apologies for my son’s behavior,” he said to her. “Rest assured, he will be reprimanded.” And he dragged the kid away, back inside the house.
Sarah stared after him, trying to square the man who had threatened her in the kitchen with the man who had just told his son that a woman was never to be harmed in any way, no matter the provocation.
Dewey appeared, a champagne glass in his hand. He was smiling as if the whole thing was part of the amusements.
“Heard there was a bit of a to-do. Has George sorted it all out?”
“Yes, everything is fine now.”
“That’s good, then. Good old George.”
“What is it that is so good from old George?” she muttered.
“Are you all right? Just kids being kids.” He winked at Libby, then looked back to Sarah. “Don’t worry about it, darling.”
“Who is this George?”
“My fault. I should have introduced you properly. George and I grew up together. Probably the oldest friend I’ve got.”
Something about him, she thought, was oddly familiar.
“And this George, what is his other name?”
“It’s Seabrook, George Seabrook.”
31
There was a fine glaze of light along the sky, dawn not far off. The sand along the shoreline was cold under her bare toes. She looked back at the house still blazing with light through the mist, wondered if all the guests were gone, if it was safe to go back.
She heard a foghorn somewhere out on the Sound. It reminded her of the troopship that took Micha away from her. I should have loved him more, she thought.
A green light burned on the end of the dock. I should have loved him more. Will I be saying that one day about my new husband?
“There you are,” a voice said. It was Dewey. “A fine way to spend your wedding night.”
“Have they all gone?”
“Just the servants clearing up.”
“Where is Libby?”
“She’s tucked up, asleep.” Dewey had taken off his shoes and socks, stood there in his suspenders and shirtsleeves, a brandy snifter in his right hand. He offered it to her, and she took it and gulped at it, felt it burn all the way down. She shuddered.
“What’s wrong?” he said.
Tell him, she thought. Tell him everything. If you don’t, you are going to have to lie for the rest of your life together. Tell him about his friend George Seabrook, that you stole his daughter from him, that Libby is his blood and bone.
Say it, Sarah. End this now. It’s your fault you are in a mess again. Now you have to fix it.
“He threatened me,” she said.
“Who? Who threatened you?”
“‘Good old George.’ He said I should never hurt you, or else I would be in trouble.”
“Did he?” He took the snifter back and swallowed the rest. When he spoke again, his voice had taken on a hard edge. “I’m sure he didn’t mean it.”
“Do you see him very much?”
“Not often. He lives in Boston now. We go out to lunch whenever he comes to town, maybe three or four times a year.”
Three or four times a year, she thought. That’s not a lot, especially if he doesn’t come to the house, just goes to Dewey’s club downtown.
“I’m sure he didn’t mean to scare you. He’s a teddy bear, really, don’t take any notice. Come back to the house. It’s our wedding night. We should be tucked up in bed by now.”
Sad, sweet Dewey, still wanting to protect her over anything. She felt a sudden wave of affection for him. She supposed right then she felt a lot better about him than she did about herself. She smiled and took his hand and walked back with him across the lawn.
She woke up a few hours later in the large white bed on the top floor of the house. She reached out for her new husband, but he wasn’t there, the bedsheets on his side thrown back, the pillow still warm. She sat up. It was morning. The French doors were open, and the white net curtains billowed in a soft salt breeze. Out on the Sound the scalloped sail of a yacht luffed in the wind as an ancient cedar-hulled schooner reached back toward the land.
She put on a dressing gown and went out onto the landing. The servants were still clearing up after the party. She heard Dewey’s voice, leaned over the bannister, and saw him murmuring into the telephone.
“Billy,” George said down the line. “You’re up early. Thought you’d still be sleeping it off.”
“Wanted to catch you before you headed back to Boston.”
“I was about to go down to breakfast. What can I do for you, Bill?”
Dewey watched two of the servants carrying boxes of empty bottles out to the truck outside. He wondered how many bottles of French champagne his guests had gone through last night. He wasn’t looking forward to getting the bill.
“Heard there was a bit of a set-to last night.”
“You mean Jack and your stepdaughter? I wouldn’t worry about that. I handled it.”
“No, not that. Sarah said you two had words.”
There was a long silence on the other end of the telephone. Finally, George said: “Sorry, Bill, but you know me, if something needs to be said, I say it.”
“And what is it that you think needs to be said, George?”
“For God’s sake.”
“I know what you think of her. You’ve made that clear enough.”
There was a crash from the kitchen: one of the maids had dropped a plate. Dewey hissed “Keep it down in there!” as one of the juniors ran to fetch a dustpan and broom.
“I’ll call you next time I come to town,” George said.
“I guess,” Dewey said, and hung up. Something made him look up. He saw Sarah on the landing. She was there only for a second, and then she dashed
back to the bedroom. He hadn’t meant for her to hear, but he supposed it didn’t matter that she had. He wanted her to know she was his wife now, and she didn’t have to take bad-mouthing from anyone. Even George Seabrook.
PART 4
32
Arlington Apartments, Upper West Side, New York, August 1929
Sarah woke to the sun streaming in through the tall windows. She slipped into her gown and velvet slippers and went out onto the terrace. Central Park was bathed in sunshine all the way to Harlem. The sound of traffic from below was muted. New York already up and about its business, making more gelt than it could ever spend.
Seven years, and still not a morning she didn’t look at this view and think about Delancey Street. Back in those days, she was lucky ever to see any blue sky between the tracks of the Elevated and the tangle of fire escapes. Up here there were eggs scrambled in a pan for her whenever she asked, brought to her on fine bone china along with an ironed newspaper; a maid to fetch pickles instead of buying them from a pushcart; no hiding under the stairs from the rent man; here she had the smell of coffee and not the reek of the outhouse in the yard and the stink of yesterday’s herring going stale.
Dewey was already dressed in his banker suit and polished banker shoes, sitting at the breakfast table reading the financial pages of the New York Times. He murmured a good morning to her from behind the newspaper. The maid asked her if she wanted breakfast.
“Just coffee, Constance,” she said.
“Not hungry?” Dewey said to her.
“I didn’t sleep good.” She stared at the stack of mail on the table beside her plate and winced. “Is Libby up?” she asked Constance when she returned with the coffee.
“Not yet, ma’am.”
Still in bed! Sarah thought. Home from her fancy school almost a week, and she had hardly seen her.
Another glance at her mail: invitations to parties and dinners. Why she should care for such things? She read the front page of the Times as Dewey held it, his hand reaching from behind it occasionally to grope for his coffee cup.
On the bottom corner of the newspaper was a photograph of a man with a ridiculous moustache standing on a big podium, crowds all around. Adolf Hitler again. Another rally, this time Nuremberg or someplace, him spieling about “unwanted populations”—He means the Muscowitzes and the Levines, she thought, the Jews. People like me. She thought again about Mutti and her father and her sisters in Tallinn. Will they be safe? Will they never stop hating us, those people? Perhaps Micha was right to bring us here.
Loving Liberty Levine Page 17
